How Do I Use Sequential Spelling

The basic structure of a Sequential Spelling Lesson is quite straight forward.

1. Say the word.
2. Use the word in a sentence.
3. Say the word again.
4. Give the student time to write the word down.
5. Write the word on a white marker board or a chalk board. (Paper will work if necessary)
6. Have the student correct any mistakes
7. Start the process over with the next word.

Helpful Tips and Reminders:

1. Each "lesson" of Sequential Spelling is really a test. If your child does not do well when something is called a test, simply call it a lesson.
2. You will get your best results if Sequential Spelling lessons/tests are given every day. It is recommended that you give one every day of the calendar year if possible, but every school day will work. Because the curriculum is laid out in approximately 4-day chunks, it is best for retention if you can give lessons four days in a row. If teaching time is an consideration, you might wish to look at the DVD version which enables the student to do the lessons on their own.
3. The student does NOT study or even see the words before the lesson or test.
4. Do not let the student see the previous days' words while taking the tests. It is particularly important that they not see the words from the lesson just before the current lesson as this will enable them to "cheat", even if it is subconsciously. For this reason, using the Student Response Book is helpful and convenient.
5. Aim for 10 minutes per lesson. Each Sequential Spelling test should not take longer than 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, cut the lesson off, even if you have not finished all the words.
6. We generally recommend that everyone starts at level 1. This is an ungraded program. Tell your student that it is like learning to play a musical instrument. Everyone, no matter what their age, has to start at the beginning and progress through the levels of learning. A student in 6th Grade would not jump right into 6th Grade piano simply because that is the academic grade they are in. They would need to start at the beginning and work their way up.
7. It is helpful to have a white marker board or a chalk board. The instructor shows the correct spelling on the board (or a piece of paper) after giving the student time to write the word down. This should take place before going on to the next word. Do not give the entire list and then write the words on the board.
   
   If the word is misspelled, the student immediately corrects his own mistake on his paper. It is important that the student make the corrections as this will help to establish the correct spelling in his brain. Corrections need to be made before the next word in the test is given.
8. When giving the test, give the word, use it in a sentence if possible, and then give the word again. For ready-made sentences, consider using "Word Families in Sentence Context." This book is available as a free e-book for when you purchase an AVKO Membership.
9. Use different colors to delineate the patterns when showing the words. Show the word family's pattern first (generally the ending of the word) and then show the onsets and endings. For example, the word "spins" is in the "-in" family. Show in, then add sp to the beginning (in a different color than in). Then add s at the end (in a different color than in but can be the same color as sp.)
   -in
   spin
   spins
   
   It is important to write the words out using the two (or more) different colors for the student to see. Do not just do the lesson orally. Seeing the words as well as hearing them and writing them helps the brain to lock in the word patterns. You will not be nearly as effective if you do not write the words out for the student to see.

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The Five Basic Structures of English Spelling Patterns

The Five Basic Structures of English Spelling Patterns:
The Simple, Fancy, Insane, Tricky, and Scrunched Up

	Basic	Intermediate	Advanced
Simple	cat, big, call, dog, run, stay, jump, ate, shop, quick, queen	shunned, chewing, missed, pinning, outfielder, preacher, defroster, understanding	peddled, strictly, belittled, reenacted, enabled, shackled, misunderstandings
Fancy	onion, notice, station, caution, special, crucial, Christ, sessions	suspicious, suspicions, unique, personalities, initially, linguistic, hysteria, Christianity, memoirs	flambeau, Chablis, ennui, psychology, psychic, rendezvous, picturesque, mosque
Insane	one, does, was, have, laugh, laughter, cousin, daughter, should	lingerie, aye, draught, soldering, indictment, salve, corps, Chanukah, renege, cologne	hors d'oeuvres, ciao, conch, jai alai, Qin, ribald, loughs, victuals, quays
Tricky	deer/dear, aunt/ant, be/bee, bear/bare red/read/reed	do/dew/due, aisle/isle/I'll, missed/mist, passed/past, affect/effect, lox/locks/lochs, accept/except	allusion/illusion, cache/cash, spade/spayed, descent/dissent
Scrunched Up	It’s, didn't, Mr., Mrs., Ms., Ave., Dr., St., they’re, we’re	'tis, 'twas, ASAP, CIA, PED XING, used to / "usta", going to / "gonna", supposed to / "sposta", @#$%&!"	e.g., "whudja", Ste., Y2K, i.e., sic, et al., SQ3R, WPA, POTUS, IDA

Simple words that have a base of one syllable. The word fishermen has three syllables but its base is the one syllable word fish. The -le words such as little, castle, and candle can be considered as one syllable words, or the only two-syllable based words to be "simple."

• The Basic Simple Words are taught in almost all phonics programs.
• The Intermediate Simple Words generally are not taught specifically or intensively. What usually occurs is that the base word such as bat is taught but not the other structural forms such as bats, batted, batting, batter, batters, battered, battering, battery, and batteries. It generally is assumed that students can apply the rules about adding -s -ed -ing -er etc. Some can and do, but certainly not all.
• The Advanced Simple Words are usually assumed to be learned by osmosis.

Fancy words are those that usually cannot be reduced to a one syllable base. These words have come into our language from Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, etc. with their basic phonic patterns (which are different from English) retained.

• The Basic Fancy Patterns are sometimes taught or encountered in some reading programs. Some examples of these are the -tion = "shun" or the -cial = "shul" as in special and the -cious = "shus" as in precious.
• The Intermediate Fancy Patterns are rarely systematically taught. Examples of these are -tial = "shull" as in impartial, the ch = "sh" as in chef, or the -et = "ay", as in buffet.
• The Advanced Fancy Patterns are not taught specifically or intensively and are usually assumed to be learned by osmosis. Examples of these are -eau = "oh" as chateau, u = w as in suite and suede, and -ique = "eek" as in mystique.

Insane words are not pronounceable using any standard rules of phonics.

• The Basic Insane Words such as does, was were, gone, and eyes are taught or encountered in most reading programs as sight words.
• The Intermediate Insane Words are not taught specifically nor intensively. They are words such as salve, lingerie, and soldering.
• The Advanced Insane Words are usually assumed to be learned by osmosis. Examples of these are ciao, hors d'oeuvres, and victuals (often misspelled as vittles even by highly educated people).

Tricky words are homophones, homographs, and words with similar configurations that tend to confuse or trick the writer.

• The Basic Tricky Words are taught or encountered in most reading programs. Words such as red/read, be/bee, eye/I, and dear/deer are generally taught to mastery, although some basic tricky words such as its/it's, their/there/they're, and fair/fare are often not mastered.
• The Intermediate Tricky Words are generally neither taught specifically nor not intensively. Examples of these are effect/affect, (child) abuse/abuse (a child), (to) present/(a) present, and accept/except/expect.
• The Advanced Tricky Words are usually assumed to be learned by osmosis. Examples of these are allusion/illusion, resume (writing)/(write a) resume, material/materiel, and personal/personnel.

Scrunched Up words are those word phrases for which linguists have coined the esoteric terms sandhi (pronounced "Sunday") and synalepha. We have also included acronyms and abbreviations.

• The Basic Scrunched Up Words are generally taught or encountered in most reading programs. Examples of these are the common contractions I'm, I'll, don't, doesn't, and won't.
• The Intermediate Scrunched Up Words are rarely taught in any reading/spelling program. The lack of teaching these allows the proliferation of misspellings as "were gonna," "hafta," "should of," "gotta," and "wudjuhgit" for "we're going to," "have to," "should have," "got to," and "what did you get."
• The Advanced Scrunched Up Words generally are not taught specifically or intensively. Rather, they are assumed that, with reading and higher education, they can be learned by osmosis. This is not true as evidenced by the numbers of educated people who say "EYE EE" when reading the abbreviation i.e. (which stands for id est and should be read as "that is" or those who say "EE Period JEE Period" instead of "for example." Included are acronyms such as SNAFU (situation normal all "fouled" up) as well as the Latin word sic which simply means: "Yes, I know that somewhere in the matter I quoted there is a misspelling and/or incorrect syntax, but I'm quoting directly and I am not allowed to edit the quotation, so please don't write to me about it."

The AVKO Educational Research Foundation would like to see the educational establishment (which includes the universities and the publishing industry) begin to provide training and materials to the teachers so that students can be taught and not just left to their own devices to learn their language.

· For methods that can be used to teach all five varieties of English Spelling, teachers and/or homeschooling parents may want to use The Teaching of Reading & Spelling: a Continuum from Kindergarten through College.

· For a source book in which a teacher, researcher, writer, publisher, or homeschooling parent can look up any word in the English language (except bathroom wall words) and find all the words that share the same pattern, see The Patterns of English Spelling.

· For a Spelling Series that contains over 35,000 words arranged sequentially by the difficulty of the easiest word within the pattern, see Sequential Spelling and print out the first seven lessons that lead students into learning to spell the difficult word beginning by starting with the easiest word in.

· See our book of the same name for help in teaching students learn the basic Tricky Words.

· For help in teaching students the "Scrunched Up" words or eliminating their phonic misspellings of gonna, were sposta, you hafta, etc., see Speech to Spelling.

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Can You Draw an AT?

Can You Draw an AT?

© Betsy B. Lee, 2003

Can you draw an at?
I can draw a hat.
I can draw a cat.
I just can't draw an at.

Can you draw meanings of here and there?
Dolch words like these are seen everywhere.
It's sure to make reading much more fun
To learn these service words in grade one.

Dolch words on lists for grades two and three
Aren't seen in grade one as frequently.
They still are found in first grade.
Knowing Dolch words gives reading much aid.

An illustration can give a clue
For guessing a word. That's certainly true.
Making a guess can bring a smile
Or it can miss by a mile.

Decoding words is another way
To comprehend what words say,
But Dolch words should be known on sight
If they will be read just right.

If sight word mastery is the goal,
Pictures are not the things to behold.
Pictures can help children visualize
But dependence on pictures can close their eyes.

Draw a picture with many a word?
I don't think that is absurd.
It helps the mind to live and grow
Like making a personal movie show.

When words don't sound the way they look,
Should readers learn from a list or a book?
A list is fine from time to time.
Dolch books are more fun, like rhythm and rhyme.

When all is said and all is done,
I'll take you back where I've begun.
I can't draw an at, a was, or a too.
Can you?

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Teaching Children to Use the Computer Keyboard

Teaching Children to Use the Computer Keyboard
by Don McCabe

Once children start learning to read and write, they often cast their eyes on the computer. They want to use the keyboard. There's something almost magic about the way letters pop up on the screen. And that bit of magic can help children not only learn the computer keyboard, but if they're experiencing a bit of difficulty learning to read and write, learning the keyboard may just be that key to unlocking the door to complete literacy.
Parents often ask me, “How young can I start my children on learning the keyboard?”

Like most of my answers, it starts, “It all depends…” I hate to keep saying that, but there are so many factors involved. One is the size of their hands and whether or not they can gently rest four fingers of each hand on the home row keys. If their hands are big enough, if they're big enough to sit at a computer, and if they really want to learn, they're old enough.

When I'm asked to recommend a keyboarding program, I simply ask the parents, “Do your children have any problem at all reading or spelling?” If the answer is, “No,” then almost any commercial program will do the trick.
The reason is that there isn't that much difference between any of the programs. They all teach in the first lesson the seven letters and the semi-colon that constitute that home row. And from there on in, it's a race to finish learning all the letters in as few lessons as possible.

But if the answer is, “Yes, my children do have reading and spelling problems,” then commercial typing or keyboarding programs may be very frustrating to them. My theory is simply: Good readers have built-in responses to spelling patterns, so they can easily read and spell non-words like: depotion, piction, incordation, and cligging. Good typists are good readers who quickly build upon these built-in responses to develop new patterns.

Poor readers don't know the patterns and don't know the words so they must type letter-by-letter, stroke-by-stroke. Poor readers need training in spelling patterns to become good typists.
If you can copy the following just as fast as the above paragraph, then perhaps I don't know what I talking about.

dGoo rdsreea vhae bltui-ni srspsnoee ot psllngie pttrnsae, os tyhe can slyiea rdea nda pslle nno-wdros lkei: dptneoio, pctniio, nicordation, nda clggngii. Gdoo ytptssi rae gdoo rdrseae hwo qckylui bldui pnuo htsee btln-uii rspnsseoe ot dvlpeeo nwe pttrnsae.
Proo rdrseae dnt'o nwko hte pttrnsae nda dnt'o nwko hte rwdos os htey mtso ytpe lttr-yb-lttreeee, rtsk-yb-rtskoeoe.
Proo rdrseae ndee rtngnaii ni psllenig pttrnsae ot bcmeoe gdoo ytptssi.

What then can parents do for their children who have reading/spelling problems? Well, they can create their own typing texts that help with reading and spelling very simply.

Here is one ordering of the teaching of the keyboard by lessons:
Lesson 1 a, d, l, and space bar. Lesson 2: s and ; Lesson 3: f, t. Lesson 4 r, j. Lesson 5 c, k. Lesson 6 i. Lesson 7, h. Lesson 8 e. Lessons 9 through 14, shifting, commas, question marks, apostrophes, quotation marks while the patterns available are drill in. Lessons 15 to 28 will have the letters in this order: g, m, n, b, o, p, u, w, y, v, q, x, z.

Sample lessons in the beginning which parents can create might look something like this for Lesson 3 in which the f and t are taught.

fff fttf fttf aaa ttt at at at ffttf ffttf fat (do three times)
at fat fats; fl fl flat flats; ffttf fttf fat; (do three times)
at: slat; slat slats; flat flats; sat fat; (do three times)

fff fttf all fall falls; all tall stall stalls (do three times)
all tall; all tall stall; all fall falls; all tall; (do three times)
fast last; last fast; fast last; fast fast fast; (do three times)

fff fad fads; ddd dad dads; lll lad lads; (do three times)
ttt at fat fats; flat flats; sat at fat; ;;; (do three times)
a fat dad sat; at last a fast lad; alas; (do three times)

This is the order of presentation that is used in Individualized Keyboarding.
Another ordering that works well and can be used for the teaching of handwriting as well is: abcd rst y efgh w ingklm opqu vxz. One letter per lesson or unit and using only the letters available to teach words that have the same patterns. (From: Starting at Square One)

Making their own keyboarding program can be very rewarding for parents as well as saving them the cost of purchasing such a program. For those parents who would rather purchase a ready-made program, we do believe that you might want to compare the AVKO's non-commercial program with any of the other programs on the market.

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